Shrek The Musical Playhouse Theatre Edinburgh 22nd January 2024 Review
Shrek The Musical is at the Playhouse Theatre Edinburgh (Mon 22 Jan - Sat 27 Jan) and judging by the responses of the children in the audience tonight Shrek keeps on finding a new generation to appeal to, but it is starting to show its age a bit in places.
Shrek is of course based on the 2001 DreamWorks animation film (which is based on William Steig's 1990 book Shrek). Adapting any book or film to a stage format, particularly in this case an animated film, is always going to be a compromise and overall it works here. The one problem that this show, along with so many others being produced today, has though is that in order to try and cause no offence to anyone, the political correctness of this current production is at times taking away some of the sharpness of the dialogue which so many children seem to love (children are overall not PC).
The story of Shrek is at its heart a modern fairy tale and sadly due to the time available to fit the story and the musical songs and dance numbers into this show, too little time is spent exploring these well-known and well-loved characters and this is where so much of the satire and humour that underpins this story lies. Shrek The Musical is also an old fashioned stage musical with a very upbeat soul music soundtrack in many places, but it cannot make up its mind if it also wants to be a pantomime.
As the principal character, Antony Lawrence gives a very solid performance of everyone’s favourite big green ogre, but his mask and the fact that Shrek is so often not the most interesting character on stage leave him all too often little room to really display his talents.
By contrast, Brandon Lee Sears as an over enthusiastic talking donkey gets to steal so many scenes as his character is, in my opinion, better written and more developed. Brandon Lee Sears also has the voice and the stage musical background to really claim some of these soul musical numbers as his own.
Every fairy tale needs a princess and Joanne Clifton as Princess Fiona get that often difficult balance of songs, dance, and humour pretty much right every time and again Princess Fiona gets the better of the dialogue every time she is on stage with Shrek.
A villain is also an essential to a fairy tale and that role goes to James Gillan as Lord Farquaad. Sadly though no matter how good James’ performance is, that character in this production is just so weak that I doubt if anybody can do much with it.
Dragons will always steal a show and Cherece Richards (also the Wicked Witch) left no one in the audience tonight in any doubt of her abilities as a vocalist, and a very good soul/R & B one at that too. A special mention has to go the dragon operators too.
You don’t go to a stage musical like Shrek expecting to find the deeper meaning of a Shakespeare or an Arthur Miller play; it is what it is, a show that all the family can go to and overall it does that well. Shrek does have some layers of meaning to it though, finding friendship, not judging people for how they look on the outside and of course finding true love. Can true love only be found though if two people look the same?
There did tonight seem to be a few problems though from the production side of the show as a gently moving screen on stage often took projections onto it out of focus which got a little bit annoying at times.
For a musical it says a lot that the song that got the most enthusiastic response was at the end of the show and not actually one written for the show, “I’m a Believer”, a huge hit for the Monkees in 1966 and written by Neil Diamond.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Shrek is of course based on the 2001 DreamWorks animation film (which is based on William Steig's 1990 book Shrek). Adapting any book or film to a stage format, particularly in this case an animated film, is always going to be a compromise and overall it works here. The one problem that this show, along with so many others being produced today, has though is that in order to try and cause no offence to anyone, the political correctness of this current production is at times taking away some of the sharpness of the dialogue which so many children seem to love (children are overall not PC).
The story of Shrek is at its heart a modern fairy tale and sadly due to the time available to fit the story and the musical songs and dance numbers into this show, too little time is spent exploring these well-known and well-loved characters and this is where so much of the satire and humour that underpins this story lies. Shrek The Musical is also an old fashioned stage musical with a very upbeat soul music soundtrack in many places, but it cannot make up its mind if it also wants to be a pantomime.
As the principal character, Antony Lawrence gives a very solid performance of everyone’s favourite big green ogre, but his mask and the fact that Shrek is so often not the most interesting character on stage leave him all too often little room to really display his talents.
By contrast, Brandon Lee Sears as an over enthusiastic talking donkey gets to steal so many scenes as his character is, in my opinion, better written and more developed. Brandon Lee Sears also has the voice and the stage musical background to really claim some of these soul musical numbers as his own.
Every fairy tale needs a princess and Joanne Clifton as Princess Fiona get that often difficult balance of songs, dance, and humour pretty much right every time and again Princess Fiona gets the better of the dialogue every time she is on stage with Shrek.
A villain is also an essential to a fairy tale and that role goes to James Gillan as Lord Farquaad. Sadly though no matter how good James’ performance is, that character in this production is just so weak that I doubt if anybody can do much with it.
Dragons will always steal a show and Cherece Richards (also the Wicked Witch) left no one in the audience tonight in any doubt of her abilities as a vocalist, and a very good soul/R & B one at that too. A special mention has to go the dragon operators too.
You don’t go to a stage musical like Shrek expecting to find the deeper meaning of a Shakespeare or an Arthur Miller play; it is what it is, a show that all the family can go to and overall it does that well. Shrek does have some layers of meaning to it though, finding friendship, not judging people for how they look on the outside and of course finding true love. Can true love only be found though if two people look the same?
There did tonight seem to be a few problems though from the production side of the show as a gently moving screen on stage often took projections onto it out of focus which got a little bit annoying at times.
For a musical it says a lot that the song that got the most enthusiastic response was at the end of the show and not actually one written for the show, “I’m a Believer”, a huge hit for the Monkees in 1966 and written by Neil Diamond.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com